The public would begin to abide by new social norm known as the "citizen search", with the idea being that subway riders themselves would be responsible for taking a quick look through the contents bags or containers brought by fellow riders onto the subway. So, for instance, say Mary and Joe are standing on the train platform. Joe has a bag. Mary doesn't. Just as the train is about to pull up, social convention would dictate that Joe turn to Mary and open his bag for her to take a quick look for anything suspicious. Mary, happy to help ensure the safety of everyone on the other train, would do so. Other passengers would engage in similar routines, each doing his or her small part in contributing to the safety of everyone on board.
Of course, none of this would be "mandatory" from a legal point of view and therefore, bag-holders who forgot or chose not open their bags would leave fellow riders with two options: 1) to request that they do so or 2) to simply take note of the bag-holders failure to abide by social custom.
The benefit of such a system is that in addition to effecting more scrutiny of passengers without hiring a single additional law enforcement officer, it would give train riders valuable information about their fellow passengers. If a person refused to open his bag and have it searched, the other riders would be presented with that knowledge and could judge for themselves whether the refusal is indicative of suspicious intent (in which case they could wait for the next train). It would also serve as a deterrent to would-be bombers who would know that no longer could they carry items onto a train without ANY risk of having it opened for inspection.
Admittedly, the idea of citizens keeping tabs on other citizens is bound to strike many Americans as rather anti-democratic and an exercise in paranoia. I certainly don't doubt it would take a lot of getting used to. But then again, if we are willing to entertain the idea of having our bags searched by Big Brother (ie, law enforcement officials), why should the idea of fellow riders taking a quick look be such an anathema?
Of course, some would rightly doubt the effectiveness of such a system given the fact that most citizens are not trained in bomb detection or anti-terrorism searches. Yet public advisories and education campaigns could go a long way towards teaching people what to look for. Moreover, the mere knowledge that someone will probably take even a brief a look at any bags on board will likely still provide a detterent even when that someone is not a profesionally trained police official.
As London showed, the government can't protect us all the time, because it has limited power and limited resources. For that reason, we are often told to "be vigilant". Why not do something that gives more than symbolic meaning that phrase and takes the burden off the government? I for one would be happy to do my civic duty by opening up my bag or taking a peek in someone else's. After all, we're all in this together.
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If nothing else, recent experience with terrorists has indicated that they are not stupid. The explosions in London were apparently caused by quantities of explosive weighing about 10 pounds, and these quantities are easily disguised as innocent objects. Although the US government has done its best to create unjustified hysteria with its technicolor warning system there is no obvious indication that US security is increased by generalized panic warnings. Doubtlessly the intelligence of citizens is helpful in avoiding disasters but going through each other's pockets in random searches seems an ulikely deterrent and most likely to cause public violence. Ideally everybody should go into public nudity to indicate they are not carrying explosives and even though this might be generally entertaining, the recent exposure of a female nipple on TV caused such consternation that this intelligent solution seems unlikely to come about.
Stop being so paranoid. There are millions of people around you without the intent to harm you. The people that want to harm you (or anyone like you) will no matter what you do. If you allow them to change your life, and the way you live - they won.
Your intrusive system would be easily foiled by a group of people agreeing to look in each others bags.
The government would love you to be suspicious of everyone around you, it stops you from realizing how your own liberties are being eroded or organizing to stop it. The easiest way to control people is to make them afraid.
Suicide bombers are very jumpy and hyped up for their hit, if you approach one of these guys to search his bag he will most likely assume that you are police or a government agent and detonate the weapon.
In future terrorists are likely to surgically implant semtex contained in material similar to silicone implants into fat 'volunteers'. It will be detonated by a simple non metallic percussion device to get around the detectors, if you think about it this would be a good method to subvert security and get it onboard an aircraft and is a logical progression to what they are doing now with shoe bombs.
They are also likely to use drug mules to unwittingly swallow semtext devices contained in condoms and destroy aircraft by this method. Some of these people can swallow around two pounds of heroin or coke and two pounds of semtext is more than enough to destroy an aircraft .The mules wont have a clue that they are'nt transporting drugs.